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Friday, 21 October 2016

Parata was the first but won’t be the last and who will fill the gaps left?

So the first
fatality of Senor Key’s dreaded pre-election cabinet reshuffle has taken place
and surprise, (genuine) surprise its Hekia Parata.

Not because Parata
was a stellar performer (her term as education minister was fractious in the
least and highly combative at worst with a trail of negatives, blunders and
outright stupidity and not a lot of positives being left behind) but because of
all the other dead wood currently drifting idly in the cabinet swamp.

In taking odds for
the favorite in the National cabinets dismissal derby, Parata was not the odds
on choice, nor was Nick Smith, despite calls for his head from Labour; but
woefully incompetent nags like Sam Lotu-Liga (who had Let the Serco Private
Prison/Fight Club Scandal torpedo the governments idea that a privately run prison
was a good idea), Ann Tolley (previous Minister for Education as well as Corrections
Minister and thereby having sown fertile ground for both Parata and Lotu-Liga
reap) or Paula Bennett (for being the willing handmaiden to homelessness and
poverty in New Zealand instead of doing what her portfolio actually specified (Social
development and State Housing).

But Parata is not
going gracefully and our dear leaders statement that her leaving was due to her
husband’s health was rapidly denied by Parata herself in what is probably her
first (and most certainly her last) stand against the PM (Key’s tolerance for
insubordination is not likely to be high).

And it here where
John Keys Furherprinzip (leader principle) shows its problems. Key has
surrounded himself with ambitious go getters like himself but does like to
change things up from time to time in cabinet by switching out non-performers
but he also likes to keep his enemies close and competing among themselves
because how else do you prevent them from scheming or causing trouble?

Judith Collins,
Jerry Brownlee, Steven Joyce, Paula Bennet and Nick Smith are all well past
their use by dates but remain by virtue of their ability to have support in
their electorate and their ability to spatter Key with muck if left unattended.
They can’t all be sent off to diplomatic postings to keep them out of trouble,
like Murray McCully, so Key has to keep them close and load them up with work
(all have multiple portfolios as Ministers) so they don’t have time to plot and
scheme against him.

Even venerable Bill
English is starting to look like a man ghost walking through history when he
starts to utter waffle about there being no problems with homelessness in
Auckland so it might even be time to retire this particular political warhorse
also.

So there is plenty
to replace but who is going to replace them?

To answer that
questions I spent time digging through MP profiles on Nationals website to see
if there appeared to be any candidates form the backbenches that could step up
for Parata (and others).

Now leaving aside
associate education minister Nikki Kaye, who has health issues (and possibly to
be spared the task until she recovers) there are plenty of candidates in the
National chorus back rows who would like their time to shine so which of these
bright eyed and busy tailed rip snorters could fill Parata’s shoes?

On background alone
there are one or two who have an educational background of one sort or another
(Jonathan Young, Todd Barclay, Tim Macindoe, Joanne Hayes, Jono Naylor and
Jiyan Yang) along with many others with
business, banking and accounting backgrounds (including TWO who previously worked
for legal drug pusher Phillip Morris), several with local government experience,
a few rare holdovers from Nationals rural past (Lindsay Tich, Barbra Kuiger and
Stuart Smith) and finally Jamie-Lee Ross who appears to have no real background
or work experience except being an MP and photogenic.

But when you
consider that Parata herself had no educational background when she was given
the role (having been either working in government or private business) when
she was given the role of Education Minister its clear the Key won’t be
choosing the next candidate on any such basis as knowing what they are talking
about or having any experience working in Education.

No what Key wanted
when he set Parata on unsuspecting students, teachers and parents was an attack
dog to push though Nationals educational “reforms” in much the same vein as he
used bully boy Brownlee, Crusher Collins and Paula “The Beast” Bennett to drive
through Nationals reforms in their respective ministries and spaces.

And the problem is
with using attack dogs who know little about what they are doing but will
willingly do what they are told is that they will bite the hand that feeds them
if cut adrift from their food bowl and basket which is what Parata’s outburst
to the media was about. She is not going willingly but was pushed as the timing
of Keys reshuffle and then her sudden announcement to retire shows, there are
few coincidences in politics.

Who will replace Parata
is going to have more to do with how hard they bite and how willing they are to
suffer the slings and arrows of criticism as well as the will to drive through
unpopular policies; and based on the smiling photos and bios on Nationals
webpage those kind of skills are less likely to come out of anyone with a
genuine background in education and more from the harder end of the business
spectrum (perhaps one of the Ex Phillip Morris MPs could front as Education
Minister).

So get ready for a
new Minister of Education sooner or later but don’t expect anyone who will
actually have any idea of what education in NZ needs. Instead, expect some hard nosed
economic acolyte with a willingness to follow orders and the skin thick enough
to take the inevitable barbs and complaints that Nationals education agenda
will create.

And we should
expect the same in the rest of cabinet except for one small problem, one teeny
tiny problem.

John “purty mouth”
Key has run NZ since 2008 on two principles. The first is the traditional
Neo-Liberal agenda slightly modified to fit the shifting sands of the NZ
political electorate and the second is of ruling this nation of ours as a
business enterprise geared for maximum profit for its shareholders (ie those wealthy
few who genuinely benefit from its policies) and minimum return for the
employees/workers who do the actual work (the rest of the population).

And to do this you don’t
need socially conscious educators, morally sound individuals or anyone who will
advocate for the fortunes of the general populace. What Key has needed is a
team of hard arsed middle managers who will follow orders, kiss his ass (to his
face at least) and run through the bosses (him and his backers) orders without
question and to do that you need people happy with the psychopathic managerial mind-set
and model and willing to make their name as a ball-breaker.

This is why Parata
was in cabinet, this is why Collins, Brownlee and all the rest of the hatchet
team are in cabinet. Their ability to do the dirty deeds cheaply, without any
compunction what so ever and for as long as Key has pits to dig and bodies to
haul meant they were useful tools and since the likelihood of Key and National
going for a kinder more benevolent government if it gets a fourth term is less
than zero there is going to be such work aplenty.

A fourth term National
government will either be at the behest of Winston (and who knows what agendas
he has planned) and we might see some personal vendettas settled (Peters might
want goons like Brownlee out) as part of his coming to play; or we might end up
with a situation similar as to what we have now (less likely given the general
souring of the mood for Key and Co but you never know) and Key free to keep on
managing NZ as some sort of high end tourist resort.

Either way it will
still be at the behest and magic of Key to keep the Company afloat (making him
the Steve Jobs of NZ politics) and to do so he will need the same cadre of
policy thugs and National Brownshirts to do the hard yards while he directs the
show from the backroom and keeps himself a few degrees removed from all the
ugliness.

Such a situation leaves
little room for our ambitious backbencher to move up unless they can unseat
one of the current goon squad or a member of said squad becomes such a
liability (like Parata) that Key is required to cut them loose (along with all
the risks that entails).

In such a situation
promotion will be swift and brutal because it’s the equivalent of walking out
of army recruit training and straight into the battle with little time to
consider what damage is being done to one’s political reputation or career
(unless you like being a political thug) or even if they can survive.

At this time I do
not know enough about the back benches to predict who will be stepping up and
little in the media indicates that anyone else knows either, rumor and
speculation aside.

The final part of
this analysis, as much as it is, is that hidden yet important factor of
actually how Keys goon squad members have actually shielded him from harm over
the years, they take the blame and get angry inches written about them in the
media and blogs but he remains relatively unscathed.

Going into a fourth
term government with a rash of relatively inexperienced members of cabinet has
all the hall marks of Key style (or perhaps his advisers) way of avoiding criticism
but that requires getting rid of the monsters that are currently in cabinet
first (harder to do than it looks) and also has the risks of either backfiring
(think Lotu-Liga’s incompetent handling the of Corrections portfolio) or having
a green members of the goon squad not able to take the heat that comes with being
in the kitchen and flaking out. Both have their risks and either way it leaves Key exposed and dirty, something he will not want.

This means that Key
may wish to remove some of the dead wood and I don’t doubt that he will remove
some but Parata’s going makes it clear that his choices may be constrained by unseen factors and any attempt to push a goon too much may get push back.

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Itsa me!

Political pyromaniac; born again democrat; satirical connotator; fascist anarchist; relaxed conservative; focused liberal; consumer of truth, witch-hunter general of lies and putter of the praxis into perfect!